Opinion/Brown: When tragedy strikes… a test of faith for us all
There's a family I've known for a very long time. They've raised four amazing children and, over the years, I had the chance to teach each one of them. I like to think of the family as a kind of aircraft carrier from which, every few years, a hypersonic kid took off and roared into the sky, each in a different direction.
The parents, Harry and Maggie, met when they were in their 20s. I can almost picture them, he is buff and handsome, she is sharp as a blade and cute as a button. They went home knowing they’d just met the person they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with. Lucky them. Actually, it is lucky for the rest of us, too. A good marriage can be like a fountain — good things pour out of it a whole life long. So it was with the Van Scivers.
Their daughter Sarah had her bat mitzvah in 2004. The Abu Ghraib scandal had just broken. It was a warm day, walking to the synagogue, but my thoughts were dark. There was Sarah at the door in a bright red dress with a huge bow on the back. Her message for the day was about what we owe the stranger in our midst. Her commentary on the scripture was perfect. I remember asking her to grow up as soon as she could and run for president.
Years later one of her siblings had a more difficult portion: God's instructions to the children of Israel: “When you take the cities which I have given you as an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes.”
She sang the passage in Hebrew, and then in commentary, challenged the Old Testament itself. How could God command his people to commit genocide against anyone?
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Who was this 14-year-old to challenge God? But afterward, people came up to say thank you. This passage had bothered them all their lives, but they never had the courage to bring it up in front of the whole congregation.
Chicken parents do not raise eagles for children. These kids were brilliant, moral and achingly human. Maggie and Harry raised them that way.
And then just a few days ago, Harry had a catastrophic accident while working in his backyard. Husband, father, skilled outdoorsman, dear friend to so many … gone just like that. Saint Mary's church (Harry was Episcopalian) was packed to the rafters with people from all over Cape Cod, shocked and bereaved. The mind and heart shrink back in disbelief. This was so wrong on so many levels. The scale of loss felt tectonic.
My wife believes in fate. It's almost as if our birth certificates have an expiration date written in invisible ink, legible only to God. Who can say?
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I have to hope for Maggie's sake that no well-meaning soul comes up to her and soothingly suggests that God's plans are inscrutable … that everything happens for a reason … and, God being good, for the best.
The problem of evil, why good people suffer, might be the deepest problem in theology. How could something so catastrophic and painful for so many people that a church would be packed with mourners … how could something so devastating and unnecessary fall upon such good people?
I think maybe we painted ourselves into a theological corner thousands of years ago when we attempted to wrap our heads around the idea of an almighty God. Remember, we have a mind the size of a lunch box. You'd think, in approaching the infinite, we'd be more humble. Instead, we thought we had it figured out. God must be like a king — just much bigger and in charge of everything. We knew what kings were like. They suffered nothing they did not wish to suffer. They rewarded people who pleased them and destroyed the people who didn't. So if God was like a king, nothing could happen that was not His will.
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I know religious people from many traditions will rush to tell us that it's not like that … that in the end, free will makes everything our fault. But somewhere between what our hearts need and what our minds are willing to accept, we each find our understanding of what God is and how God works. Believing that something so soul-crushing to us could be good, for God breaks our hearts all over again. It’s not contradictory to faith to point this out.
We meet God in the spaces where we respond to the suffering of our neighbors, where the strength to endure and the grace to find joy and beauty appear amid our grief. May I ask us all, dear readers, to pretend for just a moment that we’re all in a shared space together — to send peace and mercy to this wonderful, stricken family.
Lawrence Brown is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times. Email him at columnresponse@gmail.com.
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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Opinion: Accidental death bring pain to Cape Cod family
